Re: Licensing Problems with Debian Packages (Was Re: Copyright lawyers analysis of Andreas Pour's Interpretation)
On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 02:23:59PM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote:
> OK, perhaps we are making progress after all. It appears that you have
> now abandoned the argument that Qt itself must be licensed under the
> GPL. So if that is true, all you require is that the collective work
> in kghostview/Qt be licensed under the GPL, with "collective work"
> having the meaning provided in the Copyright Act.
>
> Please clarify/correct any mistake in the above summary, and we can
> proceed from there.
I'm not sure what kind of distinction you're trying to draw.
The way I see it, if every right granted by the GPL would also granted
by the QPL then there would be no conflict between the two licenses.
But, because the QPL does not grant all rights granted by the GPL, the
GPL forbids distribution of a collective work which is comprised of
GPLed code plus QPLed code.
> > > > But this third paragraph clearly indicates that Section 3 is
> > > > optional. That the use of Section 3 is for cases where the code (for
> > > > example, the lgpled libc code) would not be not used as a library.
> > >
> > > It's just an example. Anyway, I don't think libc has to be licensed
> > > under the GPL when linked with a GPL Program, for the very same reason
> > > I don't think Qt has to be licensed under the GPL when linked with a
> > > GPL Program.
> >
> > It's statements like this that make me think you don't understand
> > collective copyrights. Why else would you bother making such assertions?
>
> I find this statement puzzling. Is it not your position that libc is
> not part of the "complete source code"? You stated that above. If that
> is true, then Qt must also not be part of the "complete source code".
> If you disagree with this, please explain why libc is not, and Qt is,
> part of the complete source code, for purposes of Section 3(a) of the
> GPL.
I agree that libc is part of the complete source code for programs like
grep on a Debian system. Yet it is not the complete source code for those
programs. This doesn't seem to me to be a very puzzling idea.. would
you think that libc represents the complete source code for grep?
Furthermore, I agree that libqt would also be a part of the complete
source code for programs like kghostview. The difference between libc
and kghostview is that while libc has a license which grants all the
rights required by the GPL for grep, libqt doesn't have a license which
grants all the rights required by the GPL for kghostview.
[The bsd advertising clause may be an issue for grep+libc -- if we can
show that there is some part of libc that grep uses which doesn't have
GPL compatible rights on it then we've got a libc bug which needs to
be fixed.]
> > > > [For that matter, the first sentence of the first paragraph also
> > > > clearly indicates that Section 3 is optional, but the third
> > > > paragraph has the advantage of showing why the option is available.]
> > > >
> > > > To use a phrasing similar to what you've been using in other
> > > > contexts: a Library need not be a Program.
> > >
> > > Good. So you now agree that the "complete source code" of Section 3(a)
> > > of the GPL does not have to be licensed under the GPL. But no, of
> > > course you don't.
> >
> > Once again, libc is not the complete source code. In some examples,
> > it's a part of the complete source code, but the individual parts get
> > to retain their own licenses.
>
> By some examples you mean if you take some libc source code and use it
> in a GPL'd program. I am referring strictly to the case of
> dynamic linking. In that situation, do you see libc/Qt being part of
> the complete source code for purposes of GPL Section 3(a), or not? A
> simple "Yes I do"/"No I don't, for the following reasons . . . ."
> answer would be nice :-).
I do see it as being a part of the complete source code -- however,
I do not see it as representing the complete source code. Which is to
say that I consider the GPL relevant as a collective copyright which
applies to the library for that case.
I'll also add that dynamic linking is an issue for the LGPL but not for
the GPL.
--
Raul
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